Preview of Our Visit to Antique Aero – Javier Arango
I guess I will call him the guest and presenter of honor, as we are in this conference is located in this part of California because it is in proximity to Javier Arrango’s collection of WWI replica aircraft, known as “Antique Aero.”
This presentation is designed to be an introduction to the visit we will make to his airport in Paso Robles, CA. He began by reviewing photos of the planes we will be seeing – many of these photos were of the aircraft in the air. Arrango cautioned us on multiple occasions during the presentation that flying Saturday would rely on there being almost perfect weather.
I guess the things most of us wanted to hear, after looking at photos of airplanes all day, was some first-person accounts of what it is like to fly these WWI-era planes. In Javier’s presentation we got some of that. He talked about which planes were easy to fly and which ones were not. He talked about a pilot using most of is senses to tell if a rotary engine was getting oil or not. He admitted how exhausting it is to fly a Camel; because they have to be “flown” all the time.
Of course the photos were excellent. We got to see many of the aircraft under construction and Arrango talked about how the original plans were often not very precise and so customization and adjustments needed to be made-on-the-fly while parts were coming together.
We also got the story behind a 1910 Bleriot with a home-built four-cylinder engine they re-created.
This presentation was a nice end-cap on the day and wetted all of our appetites for Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment